Present
by Princess180
Summary: A present for Harry, catharsis for Remus. Slash warnings. RLSB and GWHP, some JPLE .


A/N: Response to a challenge. Check out my LJ for full details. Please enjoy. 

Ask me a question, any question.

_ i Did you always know/i _

Since I was, oh, ten. I just knew I wasn't like all the other boys. Or, the other boys, I only knew two. My parents had a brief affair with support groups just before I went to school, so I had two other friends- boys, about my age. I think one of them was called Tristan, or maybe Thomas and he was a randy little bugger. He was a little older, I think, maybe fourteen and he'd been a werewolf since he was three, so he was tougher than most, and more grown up than even I was at the time. At least I could remember the time before. But, I'm off topic, aren't I? Well, he showed the other boy- I'll be damned if I can't remember his name- some rather suggestive pictures and I didn't really think anything about it at all. It was two women, you see- nothing to look at there, is it?

_ i I was talking about something else. But OK. Tell me about your first day at Hogwarts. /i _

I was scared out of my mind. I knew I wasn't supposed to be there, even if Dumbledore had been so nice to me, I didn't belong. So, I got on the train and got my own car and looked out the window and waited for someone to kick me off. I was sure I wouldn't get there at all, that someone would realize I wasn't supposed to be there sooner or later. So, you can imagine my shock when these two boys come trudging in. James was carrying an owl, Pele the first; I think she lasted six weeks. But anyway, Sirius was poking at the poor bird with his wand- his parents hadn't thought to teach him any spells so he was trying to, well, I don't know, figure out if he was a squib, he told me that once but I think he was probably just bugging the owl for fun. He was dreadful like that, you know. So, they sit down, and James said something- God, something really stupidly normal, I think he asked me what my favorite Quidditch team was. I should remember this more clearly, shouldn't I?

_ i Probably. What about Peter/i _

His parents drove him to Hogwarts themselves, I can't imagine why. We met him that night in the dorm and he latched onto James like nothing else. He adored him, right up until about when Lily came into the picture. But I guess you know that story.

_ i A little too well, actually. Tell me something about James, then. /i _

He had a temper, James. I remember the first time he and Sirius and I fought. It was over Quidditch, James was Chaser in second year, and Sirius was Beater and I wasn't on the team- nor did I want to be. But Peter had tried out for Chaser, because, well, because James had. I suppose. He didn't make it; he was always terrible as anything but Keeper, and only passable as that and James and Sirius were ribbing him about it something dreadful. Peter didn't actually mind, I don't think, but I did. If they were that bad about Quidditch how bad would they be when they found out about me? So, we got into this screaming match- three seventh year boys and one girl came down separately to tell us to shut the hell up. And of course, for a few first years, well, that's an accomplishment, really. James won because he could scream the loudest and he got mad enough to stick a wand somewhere rather uncomfortable.

Though, as I remember it, Sirius had a quiet talk with him the next night, and they never mentioned Peter and Quidditch in the same sentence again,

_ i What about Sirius/i _

Was bloody insane. Enough's been said about how noble he was, you should know the truth. Sirius Black was an utter and complete madman from the start. I remember- oh, good god- his mother wrote him this infuriated letter about his House, and something about how she was sure he'd bribed the Sorting Hat.

_ i Bribed the…/i _

He was mad as a hatter for a perfectly good reason. Sirius decides that absolutely the only way to resolve this problem is to have his brother sorted into Gryffindor. So he never mentions it again, and writes to her in the most cheery way for the next year, but then Regulus got to school. I honestly don't know why he thought it would work out, but Sirius really did bribe the Hat that year. Of course, it backfired terribly and Regulus ended up in Slytherin, Mrs. Black found out about the entire sordid affair and he was out of a perfectly good cap.

_ i This really happened/i _

That was tame. Once he gave McGonagall pink hair and transfigured one of the newts we were supposed to be turning into penguins into a bottle of whiskey and then managed to shotgun the whole thing before she noticed. Then, when he wanted me to kiss him in fifth year he simply enchanted mistletoe to follow me around and kissed me on the lips at every opportunity he got until I kissed back. It was actually rather romantic, now that I think about it.

_ i I'm off track. I want to know but, um, well. When did you meet Lily/i _

I know, you're not here to hear about how many broom closets I defiled in my time. Fifty-three of them, by the way.

_ i Fifty-two. Did you ever get to that one in the kitchens/i _

The one beneath the dessert tables? Yes, with whipped cream and chocolate chips. Are you sure you want to know this?

_ i I do, but you know how it is. /i _

Don't I. Now, I was supposed to be telling you about meeting Lily. Well, do you remember I told you that Pele lasted six weeks? That was because Sirius succeeded in turning her into a mouse- he claimed, for the rest of his life, that it was all done in the name of justice and retribution. I think he just wanted to scare Lily by dropping it down her top. Which was how I met Lily, Sirius blamed the entire thing on James when she came storming up to the room holding poor Pele by the tail. And then we all had to live through seven years of utterly useless bickering. Trace anything back enough and it's probably Sirius's fault.

_ i We do always seem to get back to him. But it's alright, I understand. Since we're on the topic anyway, what about James and Lily? Just tell me the whole story now and then I swear all I'll talk about is Sirius. /i _

No, don't do that. Ask all the important questions. Someone should know, I think, what happened back then, seeing as I'm the only one worth talking to who does at the moment.

_ i Oh, God, stop. I'm going to cry! Tell me about Lily and James and then I'll have twice the excuse. /i _

Lily and James, well, alright. The first time they ever spoke to each other she threw her bra at him- she was an early bloomer and hated it until she was about fifteen and everyone caught up with her. That pretty much set the tone for things to come. They did nothing the right way, he absolutely despised her for about fifteen minutes after the bra incident and then we all realized that she'd left the bra behind, which prompted a detailed examination of it. I seem to remember James and Sirius timing Peter getting it off of a dummy one summer at the Potters, but that can't possibly have happened, it's too strange.

_ i OK, so they didn't like each other very much. What changed/i _

Very, very little. Not many people know this, but James came out of the delivery room at the hospital with a black eye, Lily was so furious at him for knocking her up. But they didn't get married because of that- Lily and James were like, forgive an old man his sentimentalism, like fire and oxygen. He couldn't exist without her and she was just that much brighter when she was with him. I adored them both, I think you can tell.

_ i Yeah, do you have any tissues? When did they- well, why did they get together/i _

Here, there, doesn't that feel a little better? Well, we were in seventh year and James had just spent a month behaving like the perfect little Head Boy to win Lily's heart. That was actually working, too, I'm sure if they were telling the story that's all that would happen. Now, you have to remember that the Head Boy and Head Girl share a suite and no other students are allowed in it. Well, Sirius was bored as all hell one day and tried to get in. James had already been sneaking us in through the windows for weeks, so I don't know why Sirius thought the door would be a good idea, because it immediately sealed the rooms off.

Now, he would never admit to this being his plan, because he would never admit to how perfect Lily and James were for each other, but over the years he dropped hints. The rooms automatically sealed up when he tried to get in, and then he didn't tell anyone for two days. It was a weekend anyway so no one but Peter and I noticed their absence- Lily was always a bit of a loner, and her best friend, Alice Longbottom, Neville's mum, had graduated the last year. Anyway, I never heard anything about that weekend but they were together after that without any real explanation.

_ I That is far too romantic to be true, what happened next/i _

I know, but I swear on anything you've got that it is. So, Lily and James continued on like that. He proposed on our last day at Hogwarts, and she said yes after about twenty minutes.

_ i Did she consider saying no/i _

She liked to torture him. I think you'd understand that.

_ i I thought we were never speaking of that again/i _

You lot always forget I was a Marauder, too.

_ i Fine, then tell me something you did. Something truly evil and devious_. /i

Evil and devious? That I can provide- it was my idea the time we charmed Snape to look like a girl to everyone but himself. Also my idea to provoke the Squid into attacking Regulus when he 'missed' the carriages.

_ i That's horrible. /i _

He called Sirius a faggot and told him he was going to hell. Regulus told Mrs. Black about Sirius and she told Mr. Black and that's why he never spoke to his parents again. Regulus is the reason Sirius died never having made things right with his family, I think he deserved it.

_ i You really loved him. /i _

I did.

_ i What else do I need to know/i _

Well, I think I should tell you about Peter. I know you've been dodging the topic, but he was one of their best friends. Peter was loyal to the end, we all thought. And I think, to a degree, he thought he was protecting James somehow. That's what he said in the confession, wasn't it?

_ i I could never bring myself to listen to it. Were you as close to him as you were to James/i _

I wish I could say no, you know that, don't you? I wish I could find the moment when we all left Peter out of something, or called him an idiot or, I don't know, chained him to a bed for being a pureblood? I wish I could blame someone. But it's true, he was like my brother. I thought he was like my brother, we all did. Sure, he was a little less happy for Sirius and I than James was- but then, James was such a sap, always, we were hardly surprised. I loved him as much as I loved James, I was as close to him as I was James. I thought I could trust him as much.

_ i He betrayed you, though. Can I ask about that/i _

No.

_ i I just wondered. I knew you probably wouldn't want to talk about it. What about after school- you had four years. /i _

Four and a quarter, really, it's the distinctions that make the acceptance. Well, Sirius and James were training to be Aurors the first couple years. Now, I don't really understand how this plan worked out- it was just kind of an incredible mystery. But somehow for that one summer, Sirius and James shared a flat- this grubby place near the Academy in London and Lily and I shared one, a sort of half-gorgeous place two blocks away from her parents. Lily was semi-training to be a teacher at Hogwarts but also somehow, training to be a Healer. I was, well, my parents passed away in my Seventh year and I was drifting around trying to find a job I was allowed to do. Now, that sounds more purposeful than it really was- I mostly read Lily's teaching manuals and randomly worked at Muggle bakeries when I was about to run out of money.

_ i How long did that last/i _

The bakery jobs? Normally about three days, Sirius had a fair bit of money and didn't like me working at a places like those, so he would donate things to my accounts 'anonymously' and get James to do the same. Or sometimes Lily would get me to go over her teaching manuals with her and then pay me for it, just for there to be a reason to give me money. She had a job at Gringotts that year, or maybe it was Flourish and Blott's, Lily kept quitting jobs to dedicate her time to one or another of her career ideas, and then giving up and having to get a new one.

_ i I meant the living arrangements, but that's alright. /i _

Oh them, technically, about three days. James and I just switched flats after that long, but continued to store our crap in and tell our families we lived in our 'real' places for about a year after that.

_ i What were James's parents like/i _

Mrs. Potter- I think her name might have been Katy, but she insisted we call her Mum, so I didn't really know for sure- was one of the sweetest women I've ever met. More than pleasant, she just sort of took it for granted that any friend of Prongs' was a child of hers. His dad, who's name was Gordon and who I did not like at all because he insisted on hugging absolutely all of us absolutely every time he saw us- also understood that all teenaged boys needed to be fed. So, frequently, all we'd see of Gordon was a few Galleons on the kitchen table and note telling us to send out for something to eat and not to kill anything or break any of the chairs.

_ i Did you ever meet Lily's parents/i _

After Lily and James got married, they insisted they come by every Sunday night, and, well, James refused to go into that den of oddness on his own. See, back then, Petunia was still living at home, so she and Vernon would be there, too. Lily tended to ignore her entirely after the first five minutes of pleasantries, and then Vernon would ask James what he did as a job, and I distinctly remember James saying he was a circus clown. So, he would haul Sirius and I along, and we'd be sickeningly touchy just to see Vernon twitch.

_ i He deserved it, bloody bastard. /i _

Yes.

_ i So, what about after you switched flats? What was it like then/i _

No different, really, Sirius and I moved out of the grubby flat eventually to get a slightly less grubby but much smaller flat which was closer to my work- I'd finally settled in at Gringotts for reasons that, to this day, I can't remember. I think Dumbledore put in a kind word for me, and I didn't know quite was else to do. Lily and James moved, too, at about the same time, to this gigantic place in London, just when he started work. We spent a lot of our time at their flat, because Peter lived there, on and off, though more off as he was always away in those days. At the time we thought he was minding his little sister after his mother had gone into hospital. That was only half true, I figured out years later, with a good bit of research and a Floo to the sister. But, it was lovely at Lily and James' flat, it was at a point where Lily still hadn't decided on a job, but had been asked to an internship with the Ministry and was, at the very least, getting paid for once.

_ i I'm getting the impression you were just sort of drifting, like none of you really knew what to do with yourselves_. /i

Not true. You forget that it was a war, at the time; there was talk of open battles, of a draft, even. When you left school, you were a little in the middle of things, we were just looking for some form of normalcy while we waited to get involved. Lily was waiting to settle down, too. She'd been so focused on Hogwarts that she had never really considered what came after graduation, and now she was sort of drifting between careers. She was good at nearly everything, but she didn't really love any one thing in particular, except James. So she just decided, somehow, that being a wife and mother would satisfy her. I think that's why it took James so long to marry her, so she could realize that's not all she wanted out of life.

_ i Did he tell you that/i _

No, but it's the sort of thing he might have thought of. He was bizarrely caring, in that way. Whenever Sirius and I fought- and that was a lot after we got involved with the Order the year Lily and James got married, when we were nineteen- we both went to him. You would think it would've been Lily, but it never was. James just had this way of looking at things that wasn't quite like anyone else's. Once, Sirius and I fought over my going away on Order business for a week, I was doing something with Greyback and we'd just found out it was him who bit me. Now, Sirius pitched this incredible fit about my missing- of all the things in the world- the cat's birthday. Somehow that escalated into a gigantic fight about our relationship, his mother and cheese.

_ i Cheese/i _

Don't laugh, he still hadn't quite forgiven me for the comment about his favorite cheese store twenty years later. So, I went to James and explained the entire fight, and of course, James got the entire Greyback bit hours earlier than I might've and explained it to me. I had to leave anyway, but I left Sirius a note. I can still remember what it said, too, which is rather strange.

_ i You're not going to share, are you/i _

No, I'm not feeling inclined to.

_ i Understandable. Look, I don't actually have any more time, I've got to get home before Harry does. What about Harry/i _

We all went to the hospital when Harry was born, and he was the sweetest little thing you will ever see. He was just- well, he looked so bloody much like James, still does. It breaks my heart a little ever time I see him. Sirius was so enamored with that baby- you should have seen them together. I felt so bad that I couldn't give him one of his own for such a long time after Harry was born. And James, oh Merlin on toast, James loved his son- he was sickening about it, really. It was three days before anyone but he, Lily and Sirius could hold Harry, and Sirius took to sneaking in at night to do so. And Lily was so confident before he was born- she read every baby book she could lay her hands on, but then he was born and she had absolutely no clue what she was doing, or she didn't think she did. It was months before she got the hang of being a mother.

_ i What about you/i _

I was afraid to touch him for a while, it was like that first day at Hogwarts, when we were on the train and I didn't think I'd ever really get over it. I thought I could infect him somehow, it wasn't until James came storming in- Harry must have been eight weeks old by that point- and told me to sit down, and then handed Harry to me, that I even touched him. But once I did, I was addicted. Sirius and I spoiled him so badly- I can remember buying him six toy cars for his first birthday- this was at a point in his life where Harry enjoyed nothing so much as throwing bits of orange peel at his parents.

_ i So, not much has changed then. Do you ever think about the what-ifs/i _

What if Harry had ended up with Sirius and I? Most days, I would love to meet the person he would have been then. I mean, there would be something so different about him, I think, if he'd had the kind of childhood we would have given him. When I met him when he was thirteen, I kept seeing him laughing with Sirius at Christmas break, asking me for help with his Charms homework or some such, making fun of Snape with both of us. What I might have bought him for Christmas, who would have taught him before he went to Hogwarts, who would have taught him to fly. What it would have been like to just be normal with him.

_ i I understand. Thank you, Remus; you know exactly how much this will mean to him. /i _

I do.

_ i Anything else you want to say/i _

Happy twenty-first birthday, Harry. I hope you understand just exactly how amazing your wife is, and I hope you two have many more happy years together, for all the ones your parents, Sirius and I didn't get.


End file.
